I) The Forty Years War
(1568-1609)
When the Staaten-General convened in 1576 to negotiate the Pacification of Ghent, their goal was not to establish the foundation for a global empire destined to far surpass their former masters. It was instead intended as little more than an internal treaty between the many Provinces of the Netherlands in order to form a united front against Spanish tyranny. During an era of extensive religious upheaval and turmoil, Netherlander Catholics and Protestants put aside their sectarian difference to wage war again a foe of all Netherlanders.
This inevitably led to the United Provinces lacking an established state church. The existence of a non-denominational Christian state, for make no mistake they were overwhelming of that faith, created a haven for people of all faiths in Europe, and later its colonies, for persecuted minorities. At the time of the 1576 convention, Netherlanders possessed experience in being such a persecuted minority within the Spanish dominion.
In the first years of the Habsburg rule over the Low Countries, Netherlanders barely noticed Spanish overlord ship. Their sovereignty did not become relevant until the King of Spain, Charles V, was born in Ghent. In 1516, he inherited several titles, chief among these the King of Aragon and the King of Castile-Leon, crowns merged under his reign to for the first European world power. In 1530, he achieved even greater heights when he was elected Emperor of Rome to an entity which was neither a true empire nor was it Roman. Whether or not the Holy Roman Empire was holy or not was always a matter of opinion.
Certainly the Church had its doubts in the 16th Century. By 1560, the Protestant Reformation burned across the face of Northern Europe, taking more territory from the sway of Rome. In the northern Provinces, after an initial backlash, Netherlander Protestants were generally tolerated by local Spanish authorities. Their relative wealth make them influence in the Spanish domain and in a society based on trade and commerce both freedom and tolerance were viewed by the crown as necessary evils to continued prosperity. As for the local officials, they were more interested in wealth, be it taxation or bribes, than in religious conformity.
By 1560, Spanish policies and priorities in the Low Countries began to shift. With little regard for local custom or Netherlander money, Phillip II believed it his sworn duty to battle Protestantism and stamp out the Reformation in all the lands under his suzerainty. After ascending to the throne, Phillip unleashed the Inquisition upon the Netherlands in order to root out heretics and the Spanish Army in to stamp out any possible rebellion against his authority. Though local magistrates were still willing to look the other way when it came to matters of conformity, the king would not. He was not interested in coexistence and would tolerate no challenge to his authority or that of the Church.
The Protestant movement initially emphasized such virtues of modesty, cleanliness, frugality and hard work. Netherlander Protestants compared their simple values on the path to salvation favorably against the luxurious excesses of the ecclesiastical nobility. These values resonated with Catholic Netherlanders as well, far stronger than the indulgences issued for generations by the Church. It was these moral elements of the Reformation that represented a greater challenge to the Spanish Empire than by whose authority bishops and priests were appointed.
The Netherlands were but a small, if wealthy, corner of the Spanish Empire. By the time of Phillip II, Spain stretched its reach across the globe. They poured of the gold and silver plundered from their New World conquest to wage war against the Turks for control of the Mediterranean, against heretics for the soul of Germany and against the periodic uprising by foreign peoples not enthusiastic about Spanish rule. None of these issues were of much concern to the average Netherlander, yet the crown expected the Provinces to help pay to support these ventures.
Had King Phillip asked the opinion of any of the Provinces he would have learned that not only did the Netherlanders view some of these wars as unnecessary, they view them as unjust. As some of Spain’s wars were waged against trading partners of the Netherlanders, some even went as far as to say war against the heretics was bad for business. Unsurprising, the religious zeal of Spain gave no consideration towards the markets of Amsterdam or Antwerpen when it came to preservation of the faith. Instead, in response to open opposition, and to help fund further campaigns, Spain squeezed the Netherlands in 1571 with a ten percent tax on all land within the Seventeen Provinces. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Netherlands were no longer the Provinces they were beneath the mostly benevolent Burgundian rule. No, Netherlanders began to compare themselves in the eyes of this distant king as no better than the Spanish colonies of the New World.
Most of the native-born administrators in the Netherlands came not from the traditional warrior-aristocracy as with so much of Europe but rather it stemmed from merchant families that constantly competed with each other for power. Under Burgundian rule, the Provinces enjoyed a great deal of autonomy with their own local lords reigning. Thus before Spanish acquisition, the Netherlands developed into a rather loose confederation of highly independently-minded citizens and councils.
Decades of Spanish rule began to change much of these ways. The Kings of Spain set out to improve their empire by increasing the authority of the central government in concerns of laws and taxation. Any form of centralization was view with suspicion by Netherlander nobles and merchant houses, such as in 1528, when Charles V usurped the power of a council of guild masters in favor of a regent answerable only to himself. Charles’s changes were few and because they did not inconvenience everyone sparked no uprising. The changes of his successors, however, were many.
Under the governorship of Mary of Hungary, traditional powers had for the most part been stripped from the local provincial governments. Nobles and merchants found themselves no longer inconvenienced but rather replaced by jurists from Castile in the running of their own territory. As the years passed, Netherlanders found their status in the natural order gradually deteriorating towards the level of what modern people would call second-class citizenship. In fact, under Spanish rule there were not even considered citizens but rather subjects of a foreign crown.
Phillip II’s rise to the throne saw even more power stripped away from the natives when he began appointing members to the Staaten-General. Among these appointees stood his own confident, Granvelle, appointed head of the assembly and Margaret of Parma as governor for all of the Netherlands. By 1558, the situation decayed to the point where the Provinces began openly contradicting the wishes of Spain. Many native nobles still in the Staaten-General withdrew in protest, natives such as the Count of Egmont, Count of Horne and William of Orange until such a time that Granvelle was recalled.
During the same time religious protests in the northern Provinces increased in spite of greater oppression and harsher penalties levied by the king and the Inquisition. In 1564, four hundred members of the high nobility along with members of the merchant houses petitioned the governor to call a halt to the persecution. For a wonder, Margaret actually accepted the petition and passed it on to Spain for the king’s final verdict. The reaction there was generally not met with favor. Count Berlaymont called the petition and act of guex, outlaws, a name taken up as an honor by the petitioners who are known to history as Geuzen.
The tension in the atmosphere increased following the bad harvest of 1565, a time further exasperated by the religious wars raging in northern Europe. Hunger, hardship and the rebellious preaching of Calvinist leaders brought the situation to a boiling point, allowing the violence in Germany to spill over. In August 1566, a Calvinist mob stormed the church in Hondschoote in Flanders, removing many Catholic icons. This one incident sparked a massive iconoclast movement where Calvinists began to raid other churches and religious centers in order to destroy any statue or image upon which they could lay their hands.
The number of actual vandals was likely small and their precise background subject to debate. What is fact is that the local authorities, despite the consolidation of power made by Spain, remained slow to rein in the enthusiastic Calvinists. Their actions split the Netherlander nobility and elite into two camps. One camp, led by William of Orange, opposed the destruction, siting it would only cause Spain to pull the reins tighter. The other camp, led by Henry of Brederode, openly supported the movement. His was a bold and dangerous move in a world were a word from the Spanish governor could cost a man his head.
News of the vandalism reached the Spanish court before the petition of the Geuzen, leading Phillip II to the conclusion he was starting to lose control in the troublesome Provinces. He saw little recourse save raising an army and marching to suppress the rebellion. Raising an army in the 16th Century took time and misled some Netherlanders in believing they may act without impunity. It encouraged more people to stand behind Brederode.
This all changed on August 22, 1567, when Fernando Alvarez of Toledo, the 3rd Duke of Alba, marched into the city of Brussels at the head of an army numbering more than ten thousand strong. The so-called Iron Duke entered the Netherlands with unlimited power sanctioned by the king and replaced Margaret as governor. Alba took the harshest measures and quickly established a series of courts to personally judge all in opposition to his Most Catholic Majesty.
The tribunals established by Alba earned the name of Blood Courts. During the six years of his governorship, thousands of people both guilty and not were brought forth in these courts, convicted and executed. The exact number of the condemned and what percentage were actually involved in acts against the Spanish crown is not know nor is it ever likely. The Netherlanders claim more than eighteen thousand while the only surviving Spanish documents record numbers only in the hundreds. No matter the true cost in life, the Duke of Alba failed in his mission. Instead of quelling the rebellion, his measures only helped fuel unrest and resentment, making him the unwitting catalyst for a war of independence in the Seventeen Provinces.
His ruthless enforcement of the king’s will extended even beyond the Protestant troublemakers. He had Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Phillip of Monmorency, Count of Hoorn, imprisoned. Both were very popular leaders among the dissatisfied populace and both were staunch Catholics. Nonetheless, Alba condemned both as traitors to the crown without benefit of even a show trial and sentenced them to death. On June 1, 1568, six days before these two met their end, Alba ordered twenty-two leading persons of Brussels beheaded, again without recourse of trial and under the pretense of imposing Spain’s order upon the city. These deaths seemingly casually ordered by an overlord rather than judged in a proper court sparked another outrage among both Protestant and Catholic Netherlanders.
The Duke of Alba entered the Netherlands with the explicit goal of crushing a rebellion before it grew. Instead, his heavy-handedness managed to united against the crown what was elsewhere in Europe a very volatile sectarian mix. He failed to gather the support of a majority of Provinces, his actions only driving even the most loyal of Spain’s subjects into at least a camp of reserved skepticism. Shortly after the massacre in Brussels, the Staaten-General met at Dordrecht, without any Spanish appointees, to openly declare against Alba’s government. Those in attendance marshaled beneath the banner of the Prince of Orange.
Willem van Oranje was born to the House of Orange on April 24, 1533. In his day he was widely known as William the Silent for he always knew when to speak and when to hold his tongue. To most people he is known from the work penned by William Shakespeare of the same name, though William the Silent dealt far more with the exploits of the Earl of Leicester during the Netherlanders Revolution, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, than the struggle of William of Orange against Spain. As with so many works by the playwright, William the Silent cast a most favorable light upon the Tudor regime.
The Prince of Orange came from the castle of Dillenburg in Nassau, located inside modern day Germany. He was the eldest son of the Count of Nassau William of Stolberg-Werningerode. His rise to power began in 1544, when the previous Prince of Orange, his cousin, died without heir. William inherited his cousin’s titles and vast estates across the Netherlands. In one of history’s ironies, King Charles V served as regent for William until he reached the age of majority. Yet obtaining his rightful inheritance was not as simple as aging.
In order for the Lutheran prince to gain his lands from his regent, he had little choice but to study under Mary of Hungary in Brussels and become educated as a Catholic. In Brussels he earned both a military and diplomatic education, both of which by necessity required him to gain fluency in Spanish, French and Flemish. In 1551, he found himself appointed a captain of cavalry as he rapidly grew in favor with Charles V.
Both martial education and war time experience within the Holy Roman Empire would serve him well in his future struggle for Netherlander independence, a future far from certain while Charles remained in power. When Charles finally abdicated, it was on William’s shoulder the former Emperor leaned as he stepped down in favor of his son. It a twist of fate that the new King of Spain watched his father depended upon the support of the man who would become one of Spain’s greatest enemies under Phillip’s rule, even relations between the two men remained positive during the early years of Phillip II. In fact it was Phillip who appointed William the Stadtholder of Holland, an appointment that placed William of Orange in a position to drive for Netherlander independence.
During the Blood Court, William was one of the thousands summoned to stand in judgement before the Iron Duke. He failed to show and was subsequently declared an outlaw with his holdings inside the Netherlands immediately seized. As a popular leader in the Staaten-General, William emerged at the forefront as the man behind which all rebellious Netherlanders could stand. In pamphlets and letters spread across the Provinces, William called attention to the right of subjects to renounce their oath of obedience to any sovereign who refused to respect their rights.
William raised an army amongst the rebels to battle the Duke of Army, one that unfortunately contained mostly German mercenaries. While Netherlanders were willing to speak out in support of William, they were reluctant in the 1570s to take up arms against what they considered the mightiest force in Europe. While many rights were stripped over the decades by Spain, William’s supports still maintained their property and did not wish to lose what they had. Those Netherlanders that did found position as officers in William’s army, chief among them his brothers Louis and Adolf. Together with them, William engaged and defeated a Spanish army of three thousand at Heiligerlle in Groningen. The Battle of Heiligerlle marks the official start of the Forty Years War.
The victory turned out to be a rather hollow one. Instead of pressing the campaign onward, William was forced to let loose the reins. As his funding ran short his army of mercenaries quickly disintegrated. Forces raised by his allies either met with similar ends or were handily defeated by the Duke of Alba and the bulk of Spanish forces. Shortly after this reversal, William went into hiding as the initial fires of rebellion faded. He was the only one of the grandees still able to offer any resistance, albeit minor. With his ancestral lands of Oranje, in Breda, under Spanish occupation, William relocated his headquarters to Delft, in Holland. Delft would remain William’s base of operation until his death as well as home to his descendants.
On March 1, 1572, Queen Elizabeth of England ousted thousands of Netherlander exiles within her own nation. She walked a fine line in regards to Spain and could ill afford to unintentionally provoke Phillip II. Though Spain was more distracted by its wars against the Turks than those in the Netherlands, they were still more than a march for England’s small army. In an attempt to appease Phillip and buy herself more time, he had little option save to expel the Geuzen, forcing the beggars to return home.
Under the command of Lumey, these Geuzen captured the unguarded town of Brielle. While only a small battle– a token defeat of a nearly nonexistent occupying force– Brielle turned out to be a major morale boost. By grabbing a toehold in the northern Netherlands, the exiles rekindled the hopes of liberty and encouraged more Protestants to take up arms against the hated foreign crown. With an army to once again command, William emerged from his brief rest in hiding.
In July 1572, the Staaten-General assembled in Dordrecht, agreeing to recognize William as the new Governor-General of the Netherlands. It was also agreed upon that William would share his newly bestowed powers with the Provinces. This share of power, an innovation developed by Provinces that did not fully trust each others’ intentions gradually metamorphosed into the institutionalized separation of powers that serves as the foundation of the modern United Provinces. Yet during the Forty Years War it was more of an alliance of convenience than any sort of government. Though they come together in a common cause, each of the Provinces guarded is sovereignty fiercely, especially after Spain robbed them of their ancient rights.
However, by declaring for the Protestants, the Geuzen handed William an assortment of problems. Of the Protestants, the minority of Calvinists were bent on converting every Netherlander to their way of thinking. Of the Catholics, who viewed ramped Calvinism as almost as great a threat as Spain, the general consensus was less about religion and more about simply ejecting the Duke of Parma and his mercenaries. The merchant houses were divided as well. While they wished to be free of the Spanish boot they were not so blind as to fail to realized by making an enemy of Spain and its mighty fleet, trading abroad suddenly grew in difficulty.
It is doubtful that William would have been successful if not for an outside enemy to unite all of the Netherlanders. Even with a vicious foe to contend with, more than once tension between Calvinists and Catholics threatened to tear apart the rebellion. No matter how hard William tried to convince the masses he was fighting for the liberty of his people and the Provinces, the more fanatical Calvinists would quickly open their collective mouths and insert their collective feet by trying to turn the struggle for independence into one for the souls of the people. Since Calvinists fought the Spanish harder and with more determination than any other sect, William could not very well dismiss them from his service.
As with so much of the struggle for independence, it was more often what the Spanish did rather than what the Netherlander leaders said they strengthened unity. Being unable to stamp out the fire of rebellion, the Duke of Alba found himself replaced in 1573, by Luis of Requesnes. Requesnes arrived in the Netherlands with what he considered a policy of moderation. He would continue the remorseless punishment of rebels while ceasing the harassment of those who would swear loyalty to the king. As enlightened as his policies seemed they were so poorly managed that by the time of his death in 1575, his policy encountered the same troublesome for as William had years earlier; he fan out of money.
Amazingly, especially considering the amount of loot imported from the New World, Spain declared a state of bankruptcy the following year. The inability to pay their army, particularly the mercenaries employed in the Netherlands, would have dire consequences for Spanish rule. Mutinies followed the lack of pay and on November 4, 1576, soldiers from the Spanish Tercois entered the wealthy port of Antwerpen. Tired of fighting a determined for without their salaries, the mercenaries decided to pay themselves by looting the city. The out-of-control soldiers indulged in a wave of violence that claimed more than eight thousand lives and untold quantities of lost property. Foe three days the mercenaries pillaged in a fashion reminiscent of the barbarian invasion of Rome.
This one act of a mutinous army managed to turn even the hardest skeptics of the rebellion into its most adherent followers. The most reluctant of Netherlanders began to take up arms and pledge to cast out the Spanish for if it happened to Antwerpen, what would prevent it from repeating itself in any other city? Even those cities and Provinces still nominally loyal to the Spanish crown, quickly alienated by that carnage seen in Antwerpen, joined the rest of the Netherlands in open rebellion. In a single act of disgruntled brutality the modern Netherlander state was born.
Following the Spanish Fury, the Provinces of the Netherlands convened together to negotiate an internal treat, in which the people would put aside any religious and regional difference in order to combat the foreigners ravishing their land. William of Orange was instrumental in forming the alliance and for pushing the religious question out of the public domain. Contrary to some modern interpretations this was by no means the declaration of a secular state. The Netherlands at the time of its independence considered itself a non-denominational nation where every man had the right to seek his own path to God.
To bring about the union, William allied himself with the most powerful of southern aristocrats and one of his biggest protractors, the Duke of Aerschott. Aerschott remained in opposition of the rebellion, driving towards reconciliation with Spain up until the sacking of Antwerpen. As much as he desired to watch the downfall of William, what he wanted even more was the restoration of the old privileges and rights revoked by Phillip II. Behind him rallied southern, Catholic leaders with similar goals.
William’s ultimate ambition, a United Netherlands strong enough to drive out the Spanish appeared to be nearing reality. The Pacification of Ghent, aside from enshrining religious toleration, also called for the expulsion of all Spanish armed forces and the restoration of local and provincial prerogatives. If Phillip II did not take a simple petition well this bold declaration served only to infuriate him. Who were these Netherlander upstarts to make demands of their anointed king? Answer the only way he knew how, with a heavy hand, he sent Alessandro Farnes, the Duke of Parma, to crush these traitors.
Upon arriving in the Netherlands, Parma took up his appointment as Governor-General, the same title held by the Prince of Orange. Aided by a recent shipment of bullion from the New World, the Duke of Parma formed his army and set out to destroy the rebellion, securing the title of Governor-General for himself and Phillip II their king. The Netherlanders sough a different route in the decision of who would be king.
In 16th Century Europe, it was uncommon that a country could be governed by anyone other than high nobility, if not a king. In the 1580s, the Staaten-General sought a suitable replacement for their current self-proclaimed king. Oddly enough, they first courted Elizabeth of England, a proposition she dismissed nearly out of hand. In 1581, she was in no position to displease Phillip. Spain continued to eye England and would leap upon the slightest provocation to invade the island and bring it back under the Church of Rome.
With one rejection on its list, the Staaten-General turned to Elizabeth’s one-time suite the Duke of Anjou. The young brother to the King of France agreed to accept the offer under one circumstance; the Netherlanders must openly renounce any loyalty to Phillip II. The condition required no debate to accept as all of the delegates in the legitimate Staaten-General long since abandoned any faith in the Spanish king.
On July 22, 1581, the Staaten-General issued the Oath of Abjuration, in which the Provinces declared that since the King of Spain failed to uphold his responsibilities to the Netherlander people and thus was no longer accepted as their ruler. Though technically a formality as the Provinces rejected Phillip’s rule years earlier, the oath was in effect the formal declaration of independence.
Anjou did not stay long in the Netherlands. He was, naturally for a French noble, deeply disturbed by the limited influence and power the Staaten-General was willing to grant him as king. The French people were more accustomed to a strong ruler, one who could rule by edict and in this sense differed little from Spain. Both also believed their rule to be divine, that God anointed them with their crown. After an attempt to gain greater power via a coup, the Duke of Anjou was quickly expelled from the Netherlands, the offer of kingship revoked.
A third and, in hindsight, obvious choice presented itself after Anjou’s departure. Many of his followers and allies suggested that William himself take up the grown of a United Provinces. William considered the offer and placed it on hold for the time being. The initial rejection was not one strictly of modesty. The alliance between the Provinces was shaky at the best of times and any such move to seize power would be used against William by all of his opponents. He could ill afford to have the rebellion turn in upon itself.
After Spain was defeated? That was another matter. William remained unsure of his acceptance even after a Netherlander victory. If he became king then how many of the Provinces would follow him with an external threat no longer binding them together? Catholic nobles were suspicious of him because he was born a Lutheran. Protestant nobles and merchant houses were suspicious thanks to his Catholic education. Lastly, the Calvinists were suspicious of him because they could not count him among their flock.
Though he was not king, nor would ever wear a crown, he was still seen as head of the rebellion. As such, the King of Spain placed a bounty upon his head, one that many were intent on collection. The declaration of independence prompted the king to remove any restrains he might once have placed upon his army in the Netherlands. He called upon the Duke of Parma to restore order and orthodoxy to the Provinces by whatever means he deemed necessary. Parma met various Provincial militia in battle after battle, defeating the untrained men with little difficulty. Yet he could never completely destroy them. The first half of the 1580s saw Parma attempt to force William into a decisive battle, one where he hoped to tear the heart from the rebellion. By July of 1584, Parma’s pursuit brought the Spanish back to Antwerpen.
Less than a decade earlier, Antwerpen faced the wrath of mutinous Spaniards. Thousands of Netherlanders were slaughtered in the ensuing sacking with hundreds of buildings put to the torch. At the time, Antwerpen was not only the largest city in the Netherlanders, it also served as a financial, cultural and economic center. Its trade eclipsed even Amsterdam, the granary of the north. After the Spanish Fury, rebels rushed to the ruined city, transforming it into the center of the Netherlander rebellion. By taking the city, Parma hoped to break both the will and the bodies of the rebels and force the Provinces back into the Spanish fold. Again war came to Antwerpen and after a year long siege, the city was forced to capitulate.
After the siege, Parma enacted a policy of blocking all traffic and trade to the port. Protestants were forced to flee before the town fell, keeping a step ahead of the inquisition. They were not alone in their hasty departure. Tens of thousands fled northward, reducing Antwerpen’s population by forty thousand. Among those who fled were the merchant houses and the variety of artisans that made the city’s economy bloom. What was a golden century for Antwerpen finally came to an end on August 17, 1585.
William would not live to see the end of Parma. The bounty placed on William’s head finally caught up with the Prince of Orange. His demise arrived in the form of Balthasar Gerald. When William was declared an outlaw in 1581, Gerald decided to travel to the Netherlands and try his luck at collecting the bounty. For two years he served in a Luxembourger regiment hoping to get close enough to take a shot at William. Alas the regiment never joined with William and in 1584, Gerald deserted the army. He made his way to Antwerpen to present a plan to infiltrate the rebellion. The duke was hardly impressed by the scheme yet gave the would-be assassin his blessing. After all, if Gerald failed then Parma lost nothing. If he succeeded, then perhaps the rebellion could be shattered.
In May 1585, Gerald introduced himself to William as a French nobleman, present William with the seal of the Count of Mansfelt. The two met often for the next two months, Gerald playing the role of negotiating on terms of payment for the weapons, all the while William never realizing the seal was an elaborate forgery. William had hoped to gain not only more arms but over support against the Spanish and continued to press Gerald despite the growing reservation of his advisors. On July 10, Gerald brought with him to his appointment with the Prince of Orange a pair of pistols. They were allowed into the house, guards believing they examples of the hoped for arms shipment.
What happened next altered the course of Netherlander history and was also the first recorded assassination of a head of state by firearms. It would not be the last. Gerald shot William in the chest at close range and fled. According to witnesses, William’s last words were said to be, “My God had pity on my soul; My God have pity on my people”. The assassin failed to flee Delft before apprehension and imprisonment. His trial was a short one, almost what we would call a show trial today, where he was found guilty of regicide though William was not king and executed.
In the same year as William’s death, the Staaten-General ratified the Treaty of Nonsuch with England. As per the treaty, Elizabeth sent an army of six thousand to do battle with the Spanish. By this point appeasing Phillip II was all but impossible and the queen decided it best to try and defeat him on the continent before he had to fight the English on their own soil. Yet Phillip could hardly afford to mount an invasion of England at the time. To do so would leave an enemy in his rear, a fact that did not prevent him from ordering that plans be drawn up for an invasion.
Leading the English expeditionary for was Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Long since a favorite of the queen and rumored to be her lover at one point, Leicester remains a controversial character in Netherlander history. This was hardly the first time the man found himself at the center of controversy; years earlier his wife was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in his estate. Though the death was ruled accidental, his closeness to the queen and the vacant kingship made her death a little convenient for a man of his ambition. He spent the following years exiled from court and keeping generally out of sight.
In the early days of his time in the Netherlands, Leicester was offered the Governor-Generalship, though he could not rule with a free hand. It was not that he was a tyranny, far from it. Out of all the foreigners offered either a crown or governorship, Leicester was willing to share power with the Staaten-General. Instead, it was his queen who forbade him from making any agreements with foreign powers without her consent. As willing to share power as he was, he did not share the nondenominational values laid down by the Pacification of Ghent, a fact that became clear to all in the months following his arrival. Within the year he stood firmly in the Calvinist camp, drawing distrust from everyone else.
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Leicester also proved to be a rather poor commander, hardly worthy of a starting role in William the Silent. Nor did he try to maintain a balance between trade and war. For him, the war was to be won at any cost. The Netherlanders, while fully committed to independence, were not about to abandon commerce in the process. The trading houses in the Staaten-General lobbied for his dismissal, arguing that victorious and broke was no true victory. Leicester lost most of his local support within the year and was sent back to England in disgrace. It was a less than auspicious beginning to an Anglo-Netherlander alliance.
The turning point in the Forty Years War arrived in August 1588. Under the command of the notorious privateer– less generous people would say pirate– Sir Francis Drake, a fleet of English and Netherlander ships massed to engage the growing armada fielded by Spain. Despite the advice of some of his more cautious advisors, Phillip II assembled a vast armada, one that stripped forests bare and emptied treasuries, for the invasion of the troublesome island. What he hoped would be a glorious victory is know to history as the peak of Spanish power, a point to where they would never return.
At the command of twenty-two warships and one hundred eight converted transports, the king appointed the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. He was to sail to the Netherlands and ferry the Duke of Parma’s army across the sea for what was planned to be a quick and decisive campaign. Twenty thousand Spanish and mercenary soldiers, soldiers put to better use fighting the Netherlanders, awaited the armada in Dunkirk. In May, Medina-Sidonia set sail from Lisbon on what he expected to be an easy conquest, the 16th Century version of home by Christmas. His expectations were not excessive in that England’s standing army numbered a fraction of Spain’s.
As with virtually all battle plans, this one did not unfold in a way its architect planned. Following a running fight through the English Channel and a night attack by fire ships, Medina-Sidonia was forced to take the armada into port. He chose Gravelines in Flanders as a base to reform his scattered formation. Medina-Sidonia decided that its proximity to England also made it an ideal location to embark Parma’s army, much to Parma’s annoyance. Taken by surprise at the armada’s change in port, Parma required six days to bring his army up for embarkation.
During the running fight, Drake learned more of the armada’s strengths and weaknesses. What he learned gave the Anglo-Netherlander fleet the edge. Spanish guns were very unwieldy and their crews poorly trained by English standards. Many of the guns were fixed in place and could not be quickly reloaded, making them less-than-ideal for the battle in which they were used. Spanish doctrines at the time favored boarding enemy ships and fighting them hand-to-hand. In that regard, Spanish marines held an advantage over their foes.
Drake was not about to allow the Spanish to close in for boarding. His own strength lay in cannon fire. On August 8, Drake led the fleet of English and Netherlander vessels again into battle. With its superior maneuverability, the English provoked the Spanish into firing while at the limits of their range. Once the armada expended their heavy shot, Drake moved in for the kill, firing repeated broadsides into the enemy ships. Though only eleven of the total number of Spanish ships were destroyed, Drake succeeded in cancelling the armada’s plan to embark Parma’s army.
Medina-Sidonia left port, never picking up Parma’s army, and set sail for home. Both English and Netherlander ships hounded the armada across the North Sea but in the end it was the rough seas and not rough sailors that spelt the end of the armada. Many of the ships were lost as they rounded the northern tip of Britain with only a handful ever returning to Spain. Upon returning to Spain it is reported that Phillip responded by saying that he sent his ships to fight against the English, not the elements,
Around the same time, the Staaten-General turned to the twenty-one year old Maurice of Orange as a new commander for the rebellion. Born on November 14, 1567, to William’s second wife, Maurice inherited his father’s leadership abilities, grasp of politics and an assortment of other traits that made William a fine leader. The only trait he did not inherit was his father’s serial monogamy, Though he did father two illegitimate children, Maurice never married.
At the age of sixteen, when his father was gunned down, Maurice also inherited his father’s titles and lands, the latter of which remained largely under enemy occupation. The borders of the United Provinces would be largely defined by the campaigns of Maurice. Whether one believes it was his genius that led the Netherlanders to independence or the fiscal burden placed on Spain by its lost naval investment, all can agree it was Maurice who organized the rebellion against Spain into a successful and coherent revolution.
Starting in the early 1590s, Maurice led the rebel army to victory in protracted sieges at Breda, Steenwijk and Geertruidenberg. Following campaigns chased the demoralized Spanish army, which unlike the Spanish navy was still a going concern, out of Holland, Zeeland, Friesland and Groningen by 1595. The initial reaction from Spain was cool, as Spain had experienced setbacks before and assumed this would be no different.
Nor did they believe unity would be lasting. Sooner or later the Provinces would have a falling out. They would fracture and their armies fragment. When that happened, a reinforced Spanish army could move in to reassert control. While the Provinces did look out for their own rights, they could agree upon the common cause of defeating Spain. The grand illusion of a Spanish recovery was forever shattered in 1600, at a city named Nieuwpoort.
On July 2, 1600, Maurice met the Spanish army, now under the command of the Archduke of Austria, near Nieuwpoort. Nieuwpoort was a significant port for the County of Flanders as well as one of the last holds on the Netherlander coast under Spanish rule. For much of the year Maurice and his army of ten thousand battled the Spanish across the Province. At the time of the battle, Spain effectively lost control of the seven northern Provinces. With no hope of regaining them, Spain tried to consolidate its hold on the Catholic south.
While the strategic position was not exactly dire the same could not be said about Spain’s finances. Due to the lack of pay and, unknown to the Netherlanders at the time, inability to raise more units in Spain, the Spanish army was once again on the verge of mutiny. The only means by which their commanders could hope to keep their men in line without pay was the promise of plunder once the Spanish marched north. A second Spanish Fury loomed on the horizon.
Instead of cutting swaths of destruction across the north, the Spanish were driven from the field of battle. Those soldier who stood their ground near Nieuwpoort conducted themselves bravely in the face of a larger foe. By nightfall, the Spanish line was all but broken and any path of escape severed by the rebels. The next morning, Maurice accepted the Archduke of Austria’s surrender, terms of which allowed the Spanish soldiers to be paroled under oath that they never again would set foot in the Seventeen Provinces.
With their defeat at Nieuwpoort, Spanish forces further inland lost direct access to the sea and lines of communication that could not be rerouted through less-than-friendly France were severed altogether. Worse yet, Spanish and French interests in Germany brought the two close to war in 1601 and again in 1604. Where the Netherlands could never invade and occupy Spain itself, the same could not be said of France. Rising tensions further drew resources away from the Netherlands in favor of territory the Spanish could actually hold.
Spain was not alone in its issues with supplies. Maurice, his own supply lines long, was unable to capitalize on his victory. If not for extending his lines so thing it is entirely possible that the Forty Years War might been called the Thirty Years War, as he very well could have ended it in 1600. Despite the decisive victory, the Netherlanders fought themselves to exhaustion along with their foe. With neither Netherlander or Spanish forces able to act, third parties took the initiative, chief among them a nest of pirate that established itself in Dunkirk.
Nieuwpoort, a great victory, was only the beginning of the end of Spanish rule. After the liberation of Flanders, never again would Spain be in any position to threaten the northern Provinces. Furthermore, with their access to the sea sealed, Spain’s hold on the south grew tenuous to the point of near disintegration. They maintained their position in the south only thanks to what little support for them remained, as there were those inland who mistrusted the Dutch speaking Netherlanders to the north as much as they did the Spanish. Support was in no way universal as those in favor of independence kept track of those who showed Spain too much love, marking them for future retribution.
No longer was Spain the invincible juggernaut it once claimed to be. The glory of the 16th Century gave way to the new reality of the 17th Century, a peak of reality where the Spanish banner would never fly. In 1601, the Netherlands lost a might foe as Phillip II finally succumbed to old age. The new king, Phillip III, inherited his father’s determination. Unfortunately he lacked his governing skill and inherited a massive debt as Spanish power deteriorated. No longer could Spain roam at will. They now were forced to pick and chose their battles carefully, accepting losses in one place in hope of victory in another.
The triage of the Netherlands helped to delay inevitable defeat, making it far more costly for the Netherlands to gain formal independence. That some of the Provinces would break free from Spanish rule was no longer in doubt. For the hopeful in Spain’s royal court the question remained whether they all would. Perhaps as a way to save face on the world stage, Phillip III said good riddance to the troublesome Protestant north, acting as if they mattered not at all to Spain. His act fooled nobody, for if that were true then Spain never would have fought so long to keep control there.
The only thing a Netherlander might value as equally as his liberty would be his prosperity. As already mention, pirate nests plagued the Netherlands throughout the Forty Years War. Instead of destroying the pirates, which they did with zeal elsewhere, the King of Spain encourage it in the English Channel against enemies of Spain and the Church. The pirate threat on the open seas gradually shrunk with the growth of the Netherlander navy. What started as a small flotilla of converted merchantmen soon great to a force to rival any in Europe.
In order to root out the pirates permanently, a land campaign must be waged against them .Starting in 1602, Maurice set out to rid the country of this scourge. With an army of eleven thousand men, he had hoped to force the pirates into open battle. Pirates, being what they are, fled at the sight of a large body of men marching beneath the orange banner. Those that could take to sea and escape did, seeking more profitable hunting grounds. As for those who could not, the short Dunkirk campaign involved burning out pirate nests, mercilessly cutting down pirates, hanging any prisoners taken and occupying Dunkirk, making it the southwestern corner of the Netherlands.
The rolling up of the Spanish into Liege almost seems anticlimactic. The liberation of the southern Provinces proceeded piecemeal, involving the picking off of Spanish strongholds one at a time while the Netherlander navy prevented any attempts by Spain to land relief. Of all the Provinces, only Liege retained anything resembling loyalty to Spain. In truth, it was more of the loyalty to Rome than to Spain as the Prince-Bishopric of Liege viewed the King of Spain as Defender of the Faith.
Its location, in the middle of the southern Provinces meant Liege could neither be bypassed or ignored. While it remained outside of the Staaten-General’s control, Luxembourg remained cutoff from the rest of the Netherlands. In 1608, Maurice had the remaining Spanish soldiers bottled up under siege in Brussels, former capital of the so-called Spanish Netherlands. During the stalemate, the Staaten-General insisted Maurice deal with Liege, to plug what would otherwise be a hole in the United Provinces. Against his better judgement, Maurice divided his forces and led seven thousand men into Liege.
He marched into the Prince-Bishopric without any fear of Papal retribution. The fact that the Netherlands was already home to many Protestants had already landed them on the wrong side of Rome. His chief concern was that the Spanish commander in Brussels might rally his men and break the siege during Maurice’s absence. The actual value of the Spanish forces escaping Brussels was and still is debatable. At worst, the failure to outright defeat them on Netherlander soil would cause the war to drag on a few years longer with what was becoming the accepted outcome of Netherlander independence.
The Prince-Bishop Ernst failed to muster an army worthy of the name. When Maurice arrived in Liege, the bishop commanded barely one thousand men, most of them mercenaries. While the Bishop possessed an undying devotion to God, he had quite a bit less faith in the mercenaries and their willingness to fight for a righteous cause. He had so little confidence that he feared that when the battle turned against him, his hired soldiers might very well desert the field.
Knowing a battle would end in defeat, the bishop sought an alternative path. He attempted to cut a deal with Maurice and the Staaten-General. Under the white flag of truce, Ernst and Maurice met between the lines of armies. The bishop agreed that Liege would become part of this new nation under the condition that he remained in power and the Church held sway in the Province. It was a deal to which Maurice could not agree, at least not with a man loyal to Rome as temporal leader.
After some negotiation, the two struck a compromise. Liege would become one of the United Provinces and the bishop would stay in power and continue to be appointed by the Church, though only as spiritual head. His position, while greatly influential, was one that foreign kingdoms would one day adopt, where the titular head of state was little more than a figurehead. In his place as political leader, the Staaten-General would appoint a Stadtholder, a steward to run the Province. Exact details of how Liege would operate remained under intense negotiations until after the Forty Years War ended.
Part of the reason for the delay in final settlement involved negotiating with the Pope. Following the surrender of Liege, Pope Paul V excommunicated Ernst of Bavaria for caving into these heretics. He briefly considered laying an interdict over the entire territory for its apparent defection. In centuries past he would have and thus brought all Church functions in the Province to a halt. At the start of the 17th Century, the threat of interdict no longer carried the weight, largely in part thank to its ineffectiveness against the Venetians. Venice simply ignored the interdict and continued to run business as usual.
Instead he made attempts to raise an army to take Liege back from the United Provinces. The army of the Papal States paled in comparison to other European forces, which made his threat appear nonexistent. Paul V attempted to enlist French aid for Liege, promising the King of France lands as far as the Rhine in exchange. The French seriously considered the proposal, one that would have aided them in the sporadic Bourbon-Habsburg rivalry that was to consume the century. Ultimately, France decided to let their rival Spain bleed itself out in the Netherlands, an action the most certainly aided France’s position in Central Europe.
In the end, Pope Paul had little option save to accept the reality on the ground; Liege belonged to the Netherlands. It was not until 1622, that the United Provinces and the Vatican signed a treaty allowing the Pope to assign the Prince-Bishop to oversee Church affairs in the Province while the Staaten-General had its Stadtholder to oversee state affairs. Other bishoprics and positions in the Catholic Provinces would still be appointed by the Pop yet none of them would hold as much power as Liege.
While distracted with Liege, Maurice’s early concerns were realized; some of the defenders of Brussels managed to escape and link up with Spanish forces in Mons. Before the year was out, the remaining Spanish in Brussels were forced to surrender. Some of the defenders simply case aside their uniforms, deserted, and tried to merge with the crowds. There was no love for Spain anywhere in the Provinces and more than a few of these deserters were turned in by locals. In response to their actions, Netherlander authorities tried them as spies, condemning many to the gallows.
With Brussels secure and Liege under control, Maurice of Orange had only the enemy ahead remaining. The last bastion of Spanish authority in the Netherlands lay in the city of Mons. Unlike previous cities, the Duke of Parma assembled his army outside of the city, opting not to hole up in the city. To a man like Parma there was glory in death on the battlefield. No such glory awaited those who starved or succumb to disease within a besieged city.
Parma’s six thousand soldiers faced Maurice and some ten thousand infantry supported by two thousand cavalry. In terms of raw numbers, the Spanish were severely outnumbered. Parma planned to use his remaining cavalry as a spear in hopes of punching through the Netherlander line. He planned for an attack at dawn. Unfortunately for his plans and his person, Maurice planned for his artillery position on a nearby hill to ope up on the Spanish before dawn. The pre-emptive strike scattered Parma’s carefully positioned forces. With desertion levels high in previous battles, Parma ordered that any who fled the field without his command to be mercilessly cut down.
If not for the importance of the battle, Mons would have registered as little more than a footnote. After the bombardment ceased, Maurice led his cavalry into the now disorganized Spanish forces, cutting the enemy army into smaller units for the infantry to defeat. Within an hour, the Spanish were defeated and the Duke of Parma mortally wounded. With more than two thousand of his men dead he called for a parley with his foe. To his surprise, the Netherlanders offered lenient terms. The enemy was to be disarmed, escorted to Dunkirk where they would embark on ships that would return them to Spain. Their continued living was condition on them never returning to the Netherlands. Their arrival in Spain sent a message that it was time to open negotiations. For all intent purpose, the war in the Netherlands was over.
That was not to say the war on the global stage was over. In the middle of the 16th Century, Phillip added the throne of Portugal to his collection. When both nations were brought into personal union, the King of Spain wasted little time in utilizing Portuguese resources. While their army left something to be desired, their navy and their trade routes to the east added to Spain’s power. As did the inclusion of all of South America. By a technicality in the Treaty of Tordelles, Portugal laid claim to a large stretch of the continent they dubbed Brazil. It was a land of abundance, on by 1600, the Netherlanders decided to take for themselves.
The war across the seas consisted partly of Staaten-General sanctioned operations and partly private initiative. Many Netherlanders served as privateers, raiding Spanish commerce and the occasional settlement. Expeditions launched by private citizens met with mixed success. Privateers such as Pytrik Jonkman grew wealthy off raiding Spanish treasure ships in the Pacific. Such victories were balanced by staggering defeats, chiefly the van Aartsen expedition to Havana where all six hundred of the privateers were slain attempting to take the city, most during battle with survivors executed afterwards.
Unlike Spain, Portugal’s wealthy came from renewable resources, primarily sugar. In the 17th Century, sugar was nearly worth its weight in gold and unlike Spanish mines would not run dry. Portugal turned vast swaths of Brazil into sugar plantations. A variety of food and other luxury crops were grown in Brazil in much smaller quantities, all of which would be quite useful to the Netherlands. As would the wide open land. For a nation that struggled against the forces of nature to reclaim land from the sea, Brazil appeared a land of infinite opportunity.
Some of the more forward thinking members of the Staaten-General saw obtaining reliable food sources a worthy goal. Oddly enough these were the very same people who used their land for beef and dairy production, forcing the Netherlands to rely on importation of grain. A colony several times larger than all of the United Provinces struck them as the solution. Unfortunately, to control that land and keep the trade routes open required a massive navy, one the tax paying populace might not be convinced to fund for the sake of bread. They were, however, more than eager to invest in the prospect of dominating the world’s sugar trade.
To take this jewel as their own, the Netherlanders required a leader as brilliant on the sea as Maurice was upon the land. Born in 1561, little is known about the early life of one of the Netherlands’ most famous admirals. Whether he was born in Rotterdam or Dordrecht can not be said with any certainty and remains a source of rivalry between the two city to this day. What is known is that Coen de Bohr found himself a sailor by the age of sixteen and likely had been on the sea for years by then.
In 1588, he commanded one of the Netherlander ships during the engagement with Spain’s armada. During the battle, de Bohr earned the reputation as a reckless leader, willing to thrown himself into the line of fire just to obtain a clear shot. He lived for battle and unlike so many Netherlanders, had little interest in commercial ventures. He preferred glorious conquests over the subtleties of diplomacy and was said to lack the patience for trade. In more peaceful times he might have ended his days as a pirate swinging from the gallows.
By 1602, de Bohr rose to the rank of admiral. He earned the exalted rank following his eighteen ship raid on the Spanish port of Aviliz. For twelve days his sailors and marines occupied a piece of the Spanish mainland. The occupation was short, lasting long enough to resupply his vessels and strip the city of all its gold and silver. Holding the land was out of the question; the United Provinces would have trouble enough following independence to hold itself together much less try to hold a piece of land that had no desire to join the new nation.
De Bohr’s biggest acclaim to game was as the conqueror of Brazil. In late 1603, he landed nearly two thousand privateers in the Brazilian port of Salvador. No resistance to speak of was offered and the only combat within the town came from a lone colonists mistaking patrolling Netherlanders as game. Before he set out on this expedition, de Bohr called for volunteers to meet him in a port he had yet captured. His confidence and the promise of land and loot attracted a number of Netherlanders to his cause, including an additional two thousand soldiers sent by the Staaten-General to help conquer the vast colony. Through the winter of 1603-04, summer in the colony, de Bohr gathered his forces and made himself a general.
The Battle of Recife, future capital of Brazil, occurred on May 8, 1604. Leaving five hundred men behind to hold Salvador, de Bohr marched with fifty-five hundred volunteers, privateers, soldiers and even a few outright pirates to the city. The capture of Salvador reached other Brazilian towns earlier in the year, allowing the governor of Recife to muster a militia of four thousand colonists as well as the few hundred Portuguese regulars garrisoned in the city.
Attrition due to tropical disease made a prolonged siege impossible thus de Bohr hoped to lure the Portuguese out into battle. He used a ploy by where his army would march and when the Portuguese attacked they would feign retreat in disorder, the center moving further back than either flank. It was a maneuver of which he was rather proud yet, despite his claims, not one he actually invented. It was a common ploy used by Mongol horsemen, allowing them to trap and annihilate an enemy army.
De Bohr did not seek to kill every defender of Recife, only beat them and force a surrender. Yet when the Portuguese chased after an apparently retreating enemy in hopes of routing them, de Bohr nearly did. Well placed in the enemy’s path were the few artillery pieces the Netherlanders managed to haul overland. While few in number, these pieces more than made up in grapeshot. The stunned Portuguese found themselves surrounded with no hop of escape. Months would pass before news of the surrender reached the Iberian Peninsula.
The Portuguese were deeply concerned about the Netherlands staking claims to Brazil. The King of Spain was not, at least not too deeply. His primary concerned ran towards Mexico and Peru. Fear of losing the bullion of Spain’s New World empire was what prompted them to engage the Netherlanders across the Atlantic. It is not to say they wanted to lose a vast fortune in sugar. Far from it. The imminent loss of the Netherlands drew far more focus until Spain and Portugal assembled a fleet of thirty-one ships with the explicit mandate of eliminating one Coen de Bohr.
In early 1605, the joint fleet set sail for Brazil, meeting the Netherlander flotilla off the coast of Natal. Unlike the much larger battle with the armada, the Battle of Natal ended for more decisively. Twenty-seven Netherlander ships encountered the slightly larger Portuguese-Spanish force early in the morning of March 15, 1605. For two days, the ships battled off the Brazilian coast. The Portuguese elements of the fleet faired better against the Netherlanders as both combatants placed more emphasis on gunnery than Spain.
Once again de Bohr proved himself a masterful admiral, managing to divide the enemy force to capture or neutralize the smaller section before turning on the second. The only reason any ships escaped the battle was due to exhaustion of powder and shot on the Netherlander side. For his action, the Staaten-General awarded de Bohr land in Brazil as well as the title of Count of Natal. The title legally granted him a seat on the Staaten-General, a seat he could hardly afford to occupy while running his Brazilian estate, leaving him very rarely in attendance.
When the Netherlanders began their rebellion they could scarcely hope to gain their freedom from the masters of Europe. By 1608, not only was that goal inevitable but the Netherlands were on their way to empire. The biggest losers of the Forty Years War were not the Spanish, who merely lost some uncooperative territory in northern Europe. Rather it was Portugal, who saw their colonial empire unravel in the first decade of the 17th Century. September 15, 1608, sounded the death nail for the Portuguese Empire. What remained of their navy, eroded by attrition by Netherlanders in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, was ambushed twelve kilometers southwest of Cape Verde while trying to assemble their dwindling strength.
Coen de Bohr, the Count of Natal and Grand Admiral of the Netherlands, led his battle-hardened fleet against the utterly demoralized Portuguese remnants. To call it a battle would be generous. De Bohr struck hard, scattering the Portuguese ships. Exactly what plan the Portuguese admiral possessed has never been made entirely clear. His death in the opening act of battle, along with the crippling of his flagship, caused a breakdown in communication between ships.
That is the official history at any rate. There is some evidence, mostly circumstantial and third-hand, indicating that not all of the ships under the Portuguese banner were loyal to their Spanish king. Promises of land and potential wealth in the colonies should they place their dedication to the Brazilian colony and not which European nation ruled it may have lured a number of captains and crews into defecting. The same claim has been made against colonial governors and Portuguese companies. True or not, this final defeat insured Portugal’s colonies would sit on the negotiating table.
In mid-1609, the belligerent parties of Spain, the Netherlands and England met in the city of Calais. After surrender at Mons two months earlier, Phillip III decided it was time to cut his losses. A general armistice was agreed upon for the duration of negotiations, an agreement that would take more than a year to reach the more distant corners of the world. This saw fighting continue as late as early 1611, including a spectacular Portuguese victory off the coast of Mozambique.
With a war brewing between his kingdom and France, Philip III agreed to recognize Netherlander independence. That achievement was non-negotiable and everyone in Calais knew it. What the parties did debate was the future of colonial possessions. As of 1608, private Netherlander ventures held control over parts of the Spanish Main, including a tenuous toehold on Puerto Rico, conquests with which the Staaten-General was willing to part. Netherlanders would evacuate all Spanish overseas possessions in exchange for cession of Brazil to the Netherlands. In hindsight it might not seem a very wise bargain trading a continental empire for a few small islands. At the time, Spain valued its holdings in the Caribbean greater than Portuguese control of Brazil as the islands offered bases to protect the treasure ships sailing to Spain from pirates.
Portugal resisted this trading away of their territory by a Spanish king. Their resistance, while very loud and violent, amounted to little. In the few years the Netherlands took control over Brazil, it began to flood the place with colonists from within its own borders as well as Protestant refugees from northern Europe. Brazil was not alone in being lost. Netherlander and English raids devastated Portugal’s African ports while a spice trading company aided the King of Kandy in evicting them from Ceylon. In response, Portuguese nobles began plotting the installation of a native king in Lisbon.
Spain was already looking forward to the full political unification of Iberia, made easier by the great reduction in Portuguese strength. Phillip III surmised he could take back many of these lost colonies at a later date. For now, Spain must rest and recuperate. In sacrificing Portugal’s colonies Spain secured guarantees that the Netherlands would not interfere with Spanish shipping or trade directly with Spanish colonies and would grant Spain what we would call a favored trade status. Considering the size of the stake the Netherlands now owned in the spice trade, they could afford to wave a few import duties.
Spain did lose on possession as a result of the treaty though not to the Netherlands. In 1604, English privateers managed to capture Manila and its harbor. Once entrenched in the Phillippines England decided not to give up such a good anchorage in the Far East, an anchorage that would serve as a base to combat their former Netherlander allies and future competitors. Again, Spain agreed under the erroneous belief they could retake Luzon at a later date.
The Treaty of Calais was finalized by November and signed by all parties. The Staaten-General ratified it after only an hour of debate. It was one of the few time factions in the Netherlander government ever agreed so completely. On November 17, 1609, the United Provinces of the Netherlands were officially born. With the war against Spain over the real challenge began; governing diverse Provinces and what exactly they were going to do with all the colonial spoils of war.